


Making It Work

by Pandelion



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Coulson is Fury's daemon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 11:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Scale of one to Tony Stark, how fucked am I, Dee?”</p>
<p>Feathers brush against his chin. “Somewhere about Steve Rogers, I think,” she says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making It Work

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at avengerkink on LJ: "Coulson is Fury's Daemon"
> 
> Emphasis is on the Clint/Coulson, but Fury is obviously involved, just not in any sort of romantic/sexual way.
> 
> The only thing I pulled from HDM is the daemon concept - essentially animal manifestations of a person's soul/spirit that shift shape until somewhere about puberty, when they 'settle' into one form and stay that way for the rest of their lives. They are typically gendered opposite from the human.
> 
> Also, there are no spoilers for the Avengers movie, but this is set after the team has come together on a more permanent basis, so.
> 
> Further notes at the end.

Nobody sees it coming.

Nick Fury is omnipotent and untouchable. He’s always in control, always right, always _there_. The junior agents have even developed a system of “How Fucked Are We?” based on Fury. It ranges from the low-threat level of “We Need Extra Coffee”, to “Someone Call Stark” when things are a bit tense, all the way up to “Get Your Will In Order” for things like alien invasions and the Council calling.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that he’s just one man, a flawed human being doing the work of a god. The stress is blatant, the exhaustion apparent. So much pressure from all directions, it’s little surprise that even Fury couldn’t stand firm forever without at least cracking.

The doctors are of a mind that it’s probably long overdue and the world is just lucky that it happens when there’s nothing more pressing than a high-profile bank robbery in progress. What’s even luckier is that it’s nothing fatal, just exhaustion and malnourishment and dehydration, all relatively easy to put to rights.

Clint stops by, once, a few days after it happens. He’s not there to visit Fury so much as he’s looking for Coulson; there had been some mission reports that the agent had wanted to go over with Clint, but he hadn’t been in his office. Or the cafeteria or the break room or even in the gym. Fury’s room is Clint’s last stop before he goes to ask the security officers.

Coulson is in Fury’s room, it turns out, but not to talk reports. Clint freezes halfway through the motion of reaching for the handle, transfixed by the view through the small window.

Curled on the bed next to Fury, Coulson seems somehow smaller than usual, more vulnerable. Fury’s hand is petting gently over Coulson’s hair, a repetitive motion that is more comforting than intimate.

For a moment, Clint sees green. Sure, none of his flirting had really gotten him anywhere with Coulson, but how come Fury (Fury! The fucking Director! The one with a fucking _eyepatch_!) gets to have him and Clint isn’t even given the dignity of being told he had no chance?

“Look again,” Nadia says from his shoulder. Clint tears his eyes away from the window to look at his goshawk daemon and frowns.

“What?”

“Look again,” she repeats, beak jabbing at the window. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Clint eyes her, but looks again, squashing the envy that rises up again. “What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asks. “Clearly, Fury and Coulson are more than just coworkers. Hell, Fury’s even petting him!”

“You pet me,” Nadia points out. Clint rolls his eyes.

“Yes, but you’re my daemon. You’re part of me. Coulson isn’t—” He breaks off and looks again, harder this time. It’s impossible, there’s no way--but the longer he looks, the more it seems that’s what he’s seeing. “Coulson is Fury’s daemon,” he says slowly.

“Give the boy a prize,” Nadia says, preening. “Took you long enough.”

“Yeah, well, sorry for not immediately jumping to an impossible conclusion!” Clint huffs. “I don’t just assume that because I’ve never seen his daemon that he _is_ a daemon. And besides, Fury’s a guy! How can he—Wait. You _knew_?”

“Any daemon that talks to him knows,” she tells him. “We just don’t tell anyone else. Janus might have told Natasha, though,” she adds thoughtfully. “He’s terrible at keeping secrets from her.”

“ _Natasha_ knows?! Why am I always the last to know these things!”

“Probably because you don’t bother asking, Barton,” Coulson says from the doorway and Clint has a hand on his empty holster before he gets a hold of himself.

“Jeez, Coulson, would it kill you to make some noise?” is a reflex and Clint starts relaxing again, but then he makes the mistake of actually looking at Coulson. Fury’s daemon. A _human_ daemon. The one Clint’s been flirting with and on missions with and has had coffee with and has maybe imagined in a variety of compromising situations. Clint suddenly feels a bit sick.

“Can I help you, Barton?” Coulson asks and really, nothing’s changed. The bland expression, the tone of voice, the slight lift of an eyebrow, it’s all _Coulson_. There’s nothing that would even hint at him being anything other than human.

_No_ , Clint thinks, _you really can’t help me, because I’m halfway in love with you and you’re actually Fury’s daemon._ “Mission reports,” is what he says. “But, uh, you’re busy. With Fury. Platonically, of course, because what else—I’ll just come back. Your office, that is. Later. I need to—yeah.”

He’s not entirely proud of the way that he nearly runs away from Coulson, but the need to find a secluded spot to freak out is more pressing than keeping his pride intact.

~*~

There’s an air vent, up near the top of the helicarrier, just under the runway, where Clint can wedge himself into a corner and vibrate along with the ship. Nadia perches on his knee, beak tucked into her breast to avoid the low ceiling and he absently strokes one wing with his eyes closed, the buzz of shared pleasure at the motion nearly drowned out by the hum of metal.

For a while, he doesn’t even have to think. The hum and rumble are enough to occupy his mind, keep it clear of anything but breathing in and out and staying in contact with Nadia. He doesn’t think about anything else, like missing dinner and skipping the sparring session with Natasha afterwards and Coulson being fury’s daemon.

That comes later, when the vibration has settled into his bones, where he knows that he’ll feel it for a good week after he leaves this spot, every part of him still humming in tune with the helicarrier. Once it’s settled, then he can think about something else. Nadia shifts from his knee to his lap, tucks herself in under Clint’s chin and chirrups softly.

“I’m an idiot,” he mutters into her feathers. She rubs her beak against his jaw, but doesn’t say anything. “I almost touched him once, you know. Back in the beginning. It was after that mission in Santo Domingo.” Nadia knows this, of course, she was there, but he tells her anyway, wants to hear it in his own voice. “Forty hours of no sleep and a shot even I thought was difficult and I almost hugged him afterwards, I was so glad we were still alive. Guess now I know why he moved like his ass was on fire, huh?”

“You didn’t know,” Nadia says. Clint laughs and it’s a dry, hollow sound.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know a lot of things. God, he’s _Fury’s_ daemon.” He tilts his head back against the metal, listens to the hum for a long moment. “Scale of one to Tony Stark, how fucked am I, Dee?”

Feathers brush against his chin. “Somewhere about Steve Rogers, I think,” she says.

That’s surprising enough to get him to look at her. “What do you mean?”

She looks straight at him and her sincerity presses against his heart. “One minute you think you know the score, the next everything’s changed and nothing’s the same and you’re thinking you can’t possibly adapt to this and survive, let alone come out on top, but you will.  I know you will.”

And really, that’s everything in a nutshell. “You’re way too smart for me,” Clint mutters, tucking his nose against her neck. Her feathers are soft and slightly musty smelling; it’s comforting, a scent he’s long associated with safety and home. Her beak rubs against his jaw again.

“I’m just as smart as you are, Clint,” she retorts. “I just use my brain cells for more than shooting things and eating junk food.”

He loves her, he really does. She’s the best parts of him. He tells her as much and she warbles at him, her version of laughter.

“Someone has to be and you’re too afraid to jump without knowing someone will catch you.”

Sometimes, though, he doesn’t like her very much.

“You’d be dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for me,” she reminds him.

“True enough,” Clint sighs. “So. How are we going to play this? Keep on keeping on and just make like we don’t know anything? Or…what’s another option, one that doesn’t turn into me getting kicked out of the airlocks by Fury?”

“There are no airlocks on the helicarrier and you know it,” Nadia says. “Anyway, Coulson likes you, so I don’t think—“

“Coulson likes me, which means _Fury_ likes me and there is no possible universe where that is not a scary, scary thought, Dee.”

“—that you have to worry about getting reassigned or anything, so that’s not a worry,” Nadia continues. “Actually, I think you should talk to Coulson.”

“Talk to—Dee, you do know what we’ve been talking about, right?! This is Coulson! The daemon! Fury’s fucking daemon that I thought was a real person and have flirted with and thought inappropriate things about, I know you know this, why would you suggest—“

“I suggest it because things are not as bleak as you’re making them sound, Clinton Francis Barton,” she snaps. Her feathers flatten against her body and she doesn’t take special care of her talons when she hauls herself back up to Clint’s knee to look him in the eye. “Has Coulson even once actively discouraged the flirting?”

“Well, no—“

“And has Fury ever mentioned anything about it?”

“No, but—“

“And has there ever been even a hint that either of them had any sort of love life outside of you awkwardly pining at Coulson?”

Clint gapes at her. “What are you—You can’t be saying—“

“Oh, for the love of—“ Eight points of pain bloom around his knee and she actually hisses at him, feathers puffed up outrageously and her frustration beating against the bond, making Clint wince. “You. Are. An. _Idiot_. There is at least the possibility of making things work out and you are too much of a coward to leave the ducts and find out. Let me know when you finally decide to get your head out of your ass and think sense.”

With that, she hops off of his leg, gliding as far as she can down the narrow duct. She pops out a vent a ways down and he can feel her receding, the bond between them stretching out. It doesn’t hurt—all field agents have mandatory training to stretch the bonds as far as possible and the helicarrier is nowhere near big enough to put strain on theirs—but it’s painful just the same. That his own daemon is so frustrated with him that she has to get away from him…

Clint bangs his head back against the metal and growls, the vibration of his voice warring with the vibration in his bones.

He is so very, very screwed.

~*~

Despite the nagging sense that he should find Nadia and grovel until she forgives him, Clint stays in the ducts until well past dinner. It’s only when he realizes that his stomach has been growling at him for a long time that he finally pulls away from his corner and drops out of the same vent Nadia had used earlier. The cafeteria is thankfully close and it’s almost deserted when he swings through to grab a sandwich and a bottle of water. The two agents in the back corner don’t give him more than a glance and he doesn’t linger once he’s got the food.

Clint doesn’t have a set destination in mind after that, but it’s still a bit of a surprise when he looks up to find he’s made his way to the lounge room that the Avengers have appropriated for themselves. He hesitates, then realizes that no one could possibly know what he knows, except possibly Natasha, but she’s always been good about not humiliating him in public when it comes to the important stuff.

So, he pushes at the door and steps inside, sandwich and bottle held like a meager shield in front of him.

Steve’s the first to notice him, or rather, his eagle daemon, Patricia, is. She’s perched up on the entertainment center and her feathers fluff up in greeting before settling and he smiles in response. He likes Patricia, partly because she reminds him so much of Nadia (and he always wonders if that makes him a bit narcissistic) but also because she’s always so unfailingly nice; it’s hard to not like someone who remembers and asks about things he’s mentioned in passing.

“Clint,” Steve says, smiling at him from where he’s bent over something or other with Bruce. “We were wondering where you were. Everything okay?”

For a moment, Clint panics, certain that everything is plainly visible to everyone else. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he stammers and he claims a chair and busies himself with the sandwich to avoid any further questions. He can feel Steve’s gaze on him for a moment longer before Steve returns to what he’s doing.

“So, that was incredibly convincing, Barton, good show,” Tony says, appearing out of nowhere to lean against Clint’s chair. His ocelot daemon is draped across his shoulders and she blinks slowly at Clint, just as unimpressed as her human counterpart. “Where’s your feathery shadow?”

“Probably wrecking your room, Stark,” Clint retorts automatically, but he reaches out anyway, follows the bond to Nadia. She’s with Natasha and Janus, of course, close enough that she’s probably in their quarters. He focuses back on Tony. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Tony says easily, grinning down at Clint. “But you might want to work on your expression, you have some angst right about here,” he continues, waving a hand at the entirety of his face. Clint scowls.

“Fuck off, Stark.”

“Tony, it’s been ten minutes,” Mark says, tail flicking along Tony’s arm, and Tony grins at her.

“Thank you, love,” he says and then he’s abandoning Clint’s chair and dropping onto the couch next to Steve. Mark takes the opportunity to rub her face against Steve’s shoulder and Clint rolls his eyes. Those two have been embarrassingly touchy-feely once they’d finally figured things out and hooked up. It’s been almost a month and there’s been no sign of it stopping anytime soon.

Generally, Clint would tease the hell out of them for it, just to watch Captain America’s ears go red and listen to Tony babble about everything except his feelings, but right now, the open affection just makes Clint angry. He bites into the sandwich, not tasting it as he chews, and does his best to not think about how much he wants what Tony and Steve have, how the chances of it happening were so very low that they were nearly nonexistent.

There are a couple of heavy wing beats and Clint looks up, half-expecting to see Nadia, but it’s Patricia that lands on the chair next to his and looks down at him with one golden eye. The tilt of her head is achingly familiar and so is the low, comforting warble. “Would you like to talk about it?” she offers and Clint’s reminded again of just how genuinely _nice_ she is.

He opens his mouth to politely refuse, then pauses. Nadia had said that any daemon that talks to Coulson knows what he actually is and really, the rest of the team already knows about his hopeless crush on the man. It’s not like talking things out with Patricia can make any of it any worse than it is. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I think I would.”

“Perhaps we could relocate to somewhere else?” Patricia says and Clint doesn’t like Steve like that, hopes he and Tony keep each other occupied for a long time to come, but right now he could kiss the man.

“Yeah,” he agrees and he leads the way to a mostly empty storage room down the hall. Patricia hops up onto a chair back and Clint spins another around before settling on it, arms crossed over the back.

“So,” Patricia starts and she’s calm and in control and that’s good, because Clint’s spent most of his day huddled in a vent doing his best to not deal with this, he could use a little calm and control. “Where would you like to start?”

“Coulson’s a daemon,” Clint blurts and god, he hadn’t meant to start there. He figured he’d ease into it, maybe talk about something that’s not such a big deal. He flushes, but Patricia’s nodding.

“Indeed. Did Nadia tell you?”

“Not exactly,” Clint mutters and Patricia tilts her head and then he’s telling her the whole story. “And now she’s mad at me and I have absolutely no idea what to do,” he finishes. “It’s not like they teach us how to deal with this sort of stuff in training!”

“I should hope not,” Patricia agrees. “This is a very unique situation you’ve found yourself in; I imagine training for such a faint possibility would be a poor use of time and resources.”

That makes Clint smile and Patricia’s feathers fluff a bit around her shoulders, telling him she’d said that for that exact purpose. “Yeah, I suppose it would be,” Clint says. “But I still have to deal with this somehow.”

“Nadia is right, Clinton,” Patricia says. “You should talk to Coulson. He can answer a lot of your questions if you just ask him.”

Clint drops his forehead down onto his arms. “I ran away from him, Patricia. How am I supposed to talk to him, now? ‘Hi, sorry I ran, but I was sort of freaked about essentially having a crush on Fury and now I’ve got some questions?’”

“That is one approach, yes,” she replies drily and Clint’s got the feeling she’d laugh at him if she could. “I won’t tell you what to do, but do keep in mind that Coulson may be a part of Fury, but he is also his own being, just as Nadia is or I am. Give him—give them _both_ the dignity of their choice.”

“You mean I shouldn’t just jump to conclusions and avoid him—them—for the rest of my life,” Clint interprets. Patricia’s feathers fluff again.

“Exactly.”

“Why do you all have to make so much sense,” he groans.

“Because someone has to when you humans aren’t capable of doing so,” Patricia tells him and, yeah, she’s definitely laughing at him.

~*~

Despite the advice, it takes another two days before Clint gets anywhere near to talking to Coulson. Nadia returns at night, but each morning she flies off to wherever Natasha and Janus are and Clint knows that she probably won’t talk to him again until he works things out with Coulson (and Fury, a small voice reminds him).

And Clint plans to do that, he really does.

He just…hasn’t found the right time.

And then there’s an attack on New York that requires the Avengers and hey, turns out that having Fury direct things from his room in Medical isn’t any different than usual and the world doesn’t die a fiery death. It’s maybe a bit weird, listening to Coulson and Fury barking orders down the comms like nothing’s changed, but there’s a battle going on and Clint’s actually pretty good at not thinking about something he doesn’t want to think about, so he gets through.

After, though. After, there’s clean-up and debriefs and Natasha and Steve and Bruce go with Hill and Tony, Clint and Thor are told to report to Coulson and Clint’s fairly certain that this is the universe telling him that, “THIS IS THE RIGHT TIME.”

The universe, Clint decides, is an ass.

Thor goes first, Mjolnir clinging to his back—and that’s never not going to be weird, seeing the oversized hammer become a daemon and vice versa—and after him Tony, Mark balancing somehow on the smooth planes of armor, and then it’s Clint’s turn.

That Nadia is with him is pretty much the only reason Clint manages to resist the urge to run back to that corner in the ducts. She looks at him and then flies ahead of him into the office, perching on the empty chair in front of Coulson’s desk. Sighing, Clint slowly follows, eyes everywhere but on the man— _daemon_ —behind the desk.

“Please sit, Barton,” Coulson says and Clint drops into the chair, eyes dropping as well until he’s considering the tops of his boots. They’re scuffed and well-worn and one of the shoelaces has been broken. He hears Coulson sigh. “Barton.”

“Sir,” Clint replies and look at that, his voice is steady and casual.

“Is this going to be a problem, Barton?”

“Is what going to—“

“Oh, for the love of baked pastries!” Nadia blurts. She hops onto the desk and turns to pin Clint with one gold eye. “Stop playing dumb, you overgrown chicken. You know perfectly well what Coulson’s talking about and you’ve been putting this off for long enough.” She shifts her focus onto Coulson. “Apologies, Coulson, but he’s been particularly dense about this; not even Patricia made much of a dent.”

“It’s understandable, Nadia. It’s not an easy thing to accept,” Coulson says, smiling at her, and wow, Clint really was blind. Coulson is talking to Nadia like he always does, but it’s not like Natasha talks to her, like she’s a goshawk-shaped manifestation of Clint’s mind. Coulson’s talking to her like Janus or even Patricia does, like she’s his equal and he’s talking to _her_ , not part of Clint.

“Easy or not, he’s been avoiding doing so for three days now,” Nadia huffs. “Please talk some sense into him before I fade with shame.”

And that’s a low blow, because Nadia _knows_ how Clint feels about being left behind and even though it’s an empty threat—no daemon would voluntarily fade while their human was still living—it makes Clint’s stomach drop and his breath catch. She turns to him immediately, landing in his lap in a flutter of wings. Clint buries his face in her feathers as she croons to him, love and assurance and devotion and apology flowing full-force across the bond.

She stays pressed against his chest even when he finds the will to lift his head and he loves her, he really does. He looks at Coulson more by mistake than by design and his stomach drops again, but this time it leaves him breathless in a whole different way.

Coulson’s looking at him, at them, and his expression is… _yearning_ is the best word Clint can come up with. He looks a bit lost and a bit envious and a lot like Tony used to look, back before he and Steve got their act together, desperate for something he thought he couldn’t have. When he realizes Clint’s looking, the expression disappears, replaced by the faintly amused blandness Clint’s used to.

He reaches out before h can think about it, fingers stretching over the span of the desk, and it’s not until Coulson flinches back that he realizes what he’s doing. The hand is snatched back and Clint runs his fingers along Nadia’s back to cover his embarrassment. “So, uh, I guess we should talk?” he ventures.

“Yes, that would probably be best,” Coulson says, rubbing at his temple. “You probably have a number of questions.”

Which, yeah, understatement. Some are more pressing than others, though. ”How?” Clint blurts. Coulson blinks at him. “How are you…human? And male?” Clint clarifies, flushing.

“Oh. Well, the male part is actually not all that rare,” Coulson says. “There are a number of cases where daemons have manifested as the same gender as their counterpart. No one—not even the daemons themselves—know why, but there are various theories and explanations. He one I like the best is that a daemon is the manifestation of the human’s needs. Most humans need someone opposite to themselves in certain areas and the gender reflects that, but some humans need something else.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Clint says, looking down at Nadia.

“I told you that you needed me,” she says, but she’s teasing and he smiles at her.

“And you were right, as usual,” he replies before looking back at Coulson. “And the being human thing?”

“That…” Coulson takes a deep breath. “That’s more complicated. There’s no record of it having happened before, so there’s no precedent, no theories as to why. It’s possible that it’s just an extension of the need theory, that Nick needs a human companion more than an animal one.” He shrugs. “It’s never really been an issue before. His family keeps it quiet and we’ve managed to hide it.”

“Until now.”

Coulson nods. “Until now,” he agrees.

Clint absently scratches at the back of Nadia’s neck, fingers digging into the feathers. “So, what happens now?” he asks.

“What do you want to happen?”

“That’s not nice, deflecting like that,” Clint accuses, but he’s already thinking about his answer. “You know that I—I mean, you’re not blind and I know I haven’t been exactly subtle, surely you’ve seen that I, you know,” he stammers out.

“That you are attracted to me?” Coulson supplies and Clint flushes again.

“Uh, yeah. That.” Clint takes a deep breath, tries to get the words in the right order. “Do you—I mean, do you even… _feel_ like that? At all?”

“You mean am I attracted to others in a sexual or romantic sense?” Coulson asks and Clint nods, not trusting his voice. Coulson seems to think about it. “Not…exactly?” he says slowly. “For all that I look human, I’m not and there are some things that are constant, not matter what a daemon looks like.” Clint can practically feel his heart fracture at that, the confirmation that this whole thing was pointless.

“However,” Coulson continues and there’s a dusting of pink across his nose and cheekbones, “I do not find it…unwelcome, that you would think of me in that way. If an arrangement could be agreed upon by all parties…” He trails off and Clint’s rising hope is tempered by the reminder that it’s not just the two of them, that Fury and maybe even Nadia would have to be involved if any of this was going to work.

“I’m not attracted to Fury,” Clint says bluntly and it’s true. Part of him wants to curl up and cry at the thought of seeing Fury in anything approaching a romantic or sexual situation.

To his surprise, Coulson laughs. “And he is not attracted to you, so I think you’re safe on that count,” the daemon assures him. “But he is my human, so there are some things that will need to be considered, if you seriously want to pursue this. Do you?”

“Yes,” Clint answers immediately, because he does. If he can have this, and it looks like there’s a chance he can, then he wants it, whatever it takes.

“Then I think I need to be invited to this party,” Fury says from behind him and Clint nearly falls off of his chair in surprise. Nadia, disturbed by the abrupt motion, ends up on the desk, preening ruffled feathers as Clint rights himself.

 “I am putting a bell on you,” he threatens Fury. “See if I don’t.”

“I’d like to see you try, Barton,” Fury says with a smirk as he walks around him to lean on the side of Coulson’s desk. He doesn’t look quite like his usual self, but he looks better than he had three days ago when Clint saw him in Medical; not even Nick Fury can bounce back from exhaustion and dehydration so quickly.

 “So. I hear you’ve got a thing for Coulson.”

~*~

It’s not all figured out that day; there’s just way too much that they need to actually consider and talk out before they can truly settle into this thing. But they make a good start, outlining potential problems and getting an idea of how their relationships with each other will change.

It reminds Clint a bit of the stories he’s heard of overprotective fathers, grilling their daughter’s potential boyfriends while cleaning a rifle. He tells Coulson and Fury as much and they laugh.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Clint. If you fuck this up, you will get much worse than a rifle,” Fury says with a smile.

That’s another thing that they get figured out that first day in Coulson’s office. Partway through talking about something, Coulson had called him Clint and Clint almost said something about it, except then Fury did it, too, and when Clint tentatively tried calling Coulson ‘Phil,’ all it got was a warm smile from Coul— _Phil_ —and a nod from Fury, so that was that.

Fury is still Fury, mostly because Nick sounds too weird. Too normal, Clint decides, for a guy that basically runs the world. Fury doesn’t mind when Clint tells him that, just shrugs and says maybe that’ll change with time.

The discussion doesn’t wind down until Hill sticks her head in to check that Phil and Fury haven’t killed Clint for one reason or another and to remind Fury that he’s technically not allowed to be out of bed, just yet. Fury rolls his eye at her, but it’s clear they’re done talking for the time being.

Hill disappears and Clint levers himself out of the chair, figuring he’d swing by the cafeteria and then head to the Avenger’s lounge.

“One last thing,” Fury says and Clint turns back in time to see Coul— _Phil’s_ —hand close around his own.

“Oh,” Clint says, his hand automatically tightening around Phil’s.

It’s different from touching Nadia. There’s no bond for them to feel each other, but it’s different from just touching another human, too. There’s a sort of tingling in his hand, where his skin is pressed against Phil’s, and a sense of… Clint can’t describe it, not with words, but the closest he can get is how it felt when Nadia settled, a feeling of rightness and pure joy and love. There’s also a good dose of attraction that races through him and if just holding hands feels this good, he can’t wait for the rest of it.

Then Nadia’s flapping up to land on Fury’s shoulder and leaning over to butt her head against his cheek and _oh_.

What he’s getting through Nadia is nothing like what he’s getting from Phil, but it’s a similar rush. There’s a mild fondness, but it’s nowhere near sexual and it’s mostly overpowered by a sense of safety, with a bit of comfort. Where Phil is a fire in his veins, Fury is ice under his feet, cool and controlled and steady.

Between where Phil is still holding onto his hand and where he can _feel_ Fury through Nadia’s touch, Clint’s a bit overwhelmed. Fury raises a hand to scratch lightly at Nadia’s neck and Clint feels that, too, filtered through the bond.

It’s weird, watching _Fury_ touching his daemon, but it sort of feels right, too, in a way that Clint’s not sure he’s comfortable looking too hard at just yet. Clint looks back at Phil and smiles.

“Glad we had this talk,” he says and they all laugh and yeah.

Even with Phil and Fury talking about this like it was going to happen, it has been hard for Clint to really accept that it’s real. But now, with Phil smiling at him with clear affection and Fury ruffling Nadia’s feathers, he can see it.

They’ll make it work. He knows it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you thought Patricia's name was a nod at 'patriotism,' then you were right.
> 
> If you thought Mark was a nod at the various incarnations of Tony's suit, you were right.
> 
> Janus is also the name of a Roman god of beginnings and transitions and has two faces that look to the future and the past. I thought it an appropriate name for Natasha's daemon.


End file.
